Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Orkneyitalianchapel

Italian Chapel, Orkney, Scotland

The exterior of the Italian Chapel, Orkney, Scotland. The chapel was built out of limited materials by Italian prisoners during World War II. The chapel was constructed from two Nissen huts joined end-to-end. Most of the decoration was done by Domenico Chiocchetti, a POW from Moena, who remained on the island to finish the chapel even when his fellow prisoners were released shortly before the end of the war.

Edit 1: reworked version, downsampled to 1280x967

Reason: I believe the image meets all criteria at Wikipedia:Featured picture criteria.
Articles this image appears in: Italian Chapel
Creator: Modified version by Interiot of original image by LordHarris. See request at Wikipedia Graphic Lab

Support as nominator — LordHarris 15:40, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Oppose - Very nice atmosphere but the quality is poor. --Arad 17:37, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Poor quality. ^8thstar 18:49, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Care to explain? It's obviously taken with a point and shoot digital camera, but the quality is just fine at sizes up to 1024×768 or higher. --jacobolus (t) 23:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That the photograph was taken with a "point and shoot" camera is not an excuse to exempt from the image quality demanded by featured pictures. Furthermore, the photograph that is being considered is not 1024 by 768, and should not be regarded as such. If it were that resolution, I am sure it would suffer from complaints that it barely meets size guidelines. Image quality should not be subject to adjustment based on the quality of the camera. This image happens to exhibit low detail, moderate grain, chromatic abberation, sharpening artifacts, and dull colors, as well as an unipressive composition. Perhaps it would not suffer from some of these problems given a better camera, but then again, it is not a hypothetical image taken witha better camera that has been nominated; it is this image. J Are you green? 23:53, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean "low detail, moderate grain"? It certainly does have sharpening artifacts and chromatic aberation, as well as moderate noise, characteristically of a point and shoot camera. But there are a very large number of current featured pictures which would display a similar or lower amount of detail if upsampled to the same size as this image. Looking at a digital camera image at 100% to determine level of detail and quality, and then comparing with other images also at 100%, without respect to their total size, is a very bad means of comparison, IMO. --jacobolus (t) 00:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We have many many FP which are taken with point and shoot digital cameras. So there is no problem with those cameras. But this photo certainly has sharpening artifacts and low detail. It's not FP (The BEST of Wikipedia). --Arad 01:24, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, well then many FP should be delisted, by that criterion. Most point and shoot images (yes, this includes WP FPs) have a comparable or lower level of detail than this image. That's maybe fine; I don't really have a problem with keeping a high standard. But making the standard based on pixel peeping at 100%, without reference to the overall image dimensions, is silly. --jacobolus (t) 02:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(I edited as jacobolus did, so I did not take his response into account while writing this.) What I mean by "low detail" is that this looks like someone ran the photograph through a noise reduction filter, resulting in very little fine detail. The grass is one muddy mess of drab green, and I hardly can make out the features of the building. As for "moderate grain" I mean the chroma noise in the windows and shadowed regions. I highly doubt that there is multi-coloured grain on the actual building. Last, for my supposed comparison of this image at full size to a downsampled image at full size, I did download and downsample the image to 1024 by 796 (I believe that you have the wrong aspect ratio when you said 768). Detail was still low, chroma noise still present, etc. Almost no detail was lost - the pixel for pixel resolution is so low for this image. I would have opposed in every way that I already have opposed, and I would have an extra complaint about it barely reaching the size guideline. You talk about low-resolution featured pictures. Many of these images were promoted to featured picture quite a while ago, and few would pass if nominated today. Yes, they still cut it, if just barely, but for new images, expectations have risen. Furthermore, when compared to the downsampled results of this picture, our low resolution featured pictures are vastly better in composition and technical quality. Also, you seem to have allowed the fact that it was taken with a point and shoot camera to somehow make up for the grain. I do not factor in the type of camera into my vote, only the end product. It is the image, not the camera, being discussed. Oh, and Arad is right. Even if you do lower your standard because this was taken with a point and shoot camera, there are still vastly better images taken with point and shoots. J Are you green? 03:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
~~Weak Support~~ I like the lighting and colors. --jacobolus (t) 23:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Oppose I've decided that the composition and lighting aren't up to featured picture status. In particular, improved local value contrast would be nice. --jacobolus (t) 02:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
~~Oppose~~ See my comments in response to jacobolus's comment above. J Are you green? 23:53, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose original, weak oppose edit 1 Edit 1 is better, but still is somewhat noisy, retains poor lighting, and is still poorly composed (although the edit did just about everything an edit can do to fix a doomed image). J Are you green? 01:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Snapshot-esque. Poor lighting, uninspiring composition, sharpening artifacts, noise, lack of actual detail. --YFB ¿ 06:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm honestly not just being obtuse when I say I really like this image and think a lot of the oppose comments above are a bit harsh and even off the mark. I'm thinking more of future submissions when I say we shouldn't, and frequently don't, condemn an image because of the manner in which it was nominated (quite often a successful FP will have been edited by contributors here before it made the grade) and yet this one above made the mistake of being submitted too big, nothing else.

Encouraging - even insisting on - 3MP+ submissions is unfair on images which look perfectly good at 1000x750, as this one does. It looks awful at twice the size but I could care less what it looks like twice the size, it's a really nice image at full-screen resolution. I've been looking in here for about six months and seen some travesties of non-promotions based solely on dimensional image size and pixel-level clarity. 1000px is all that is necessary (a) for appreciation purposes and (b) to allow for reasonably sized print repro. 1000 pixels makes for a good 4-6 inch print in repro and looks great on my monitor.

This is why the minimum size guideline is.. 1000pixels.

At this size I can tell the image above is a fine capture made with equipment better-suited to small repro and screen resolution viewing: why insist on pixel-picking at unreasonable magnification, as if 30x40 is the smallest size human beings can perceive for pictoral evaluation purposes? I can think of some very fine images of which that most certainly isn't true. This rant isn't over, but really do have to go out now.. I'll post this over on the WP:FP? discussion page and would urge you to direct your flames that way ==> mikaul^talk 20:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- Incidentally, assuming this shot has been sharpened etc prior to uploading, I'd be happy to have a go at the original out-of-the-camera file, if you uploaded it. mikaul^talk 20:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mick, is the above rant directed at my oppose vote? If so, I'm a bit puzzled because I didn't say anything about resolution and I took the time to downsample it to 50% in Photoshop, where all my above comments still apply. For example, look at the edges of the stone detailing - it's got a hard edge to it which makes it look almost like the chapel was pasted onto a blue background. If you look at the original image linked to, it's obvious that this is a not-bad attempt to improve a poor-quality original. It was taken on a gloomy evening with a p&s camera, underexposed and I find it uninteresting an unspectacular. Yes, the edit would probably look OK on 4x6 but I have literally thousands of photos which would look similarly nice at 4x6" and you won't find me submitting them here. I don't mind people disagreeing with me in the slightest, but I'm not keen on being characterised as flaming. We have pretty high standards at FPC, yes, and some good images get rejected for nitpicky reasons (I wince every time I see the words blown highlights) but Wikipedia has thousands of images and promoting those which clearly aren't among the best devalues the Featured Picture title. --YFB ¿ 21:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies: no, I genuinely had no individual oppose in mind, on the contrary, my undiplomatic outburst was aimed at months of pixel-picking by a wide range of contributors here. I have no interest in personal attacks; the "flame" comment was a way of signalling my awareness that my comments were inflammatory, being "against the flow", as I say. FWIW I respect your comments in general, we seem to see things in a similar way.

I'm conscious of clogging up the nominations page with all this, so I'll move the rest of my reply to the talk page if that's ok.

mikaul^talk 00:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support Edit 1 - it's maybe too late for this pic, but comparing the two submissions, I would hope the merits of downsampling point-and-shoot pics to a reasonable size are obvious. mikaul^talk 00:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Downsampling them has no merit, except to mollify the pixel-peepers (who if they compare everything at 100% will think the new image is sharper), or perhaps to reduce file size. It doesn't increase image detail, sharpness, color, or any other attribute, and the difference in file size should not be taken into account for determining FP. --jacobolus (t) 17:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment From the article, it seems this church is encyclopedic for two reasons 1) it was built by Italian POWs in Scotland during WWII and 2)it's made of two Nissen huts. There is no way to communicate point #1 in a picture, but I think this shot improperly ignores point #2. It would have been nice if this shot had been from an angle instead of straight on, showing the curved side of the church, in addition to the completely normal looking front. I'm not going to oppose, because the downsampled version looks pretty good, but I'm questionable about the encyclopedic content. Enuja 18:04, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted MER-C 04:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]